CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Declan
I meant every one of those words. I just hadn’t meant to say them right as I was having the most explosive orgasm of my life.
The entire night had been one giant buildup to that, and it turned out to be only round one of three total. But the words felt so right as I pushed harder into her, trying to bury myself in her damn soul.
I loved Amelia Byrne.
And the funny thing was, I had no memory of when it started. To me, despite knowing it sounded insane, I felt like I’d loved her from the moment I met her in Sunday School.
I knew better, of course, but that’s just how it felt now.
When the words came out, I’d panicked just a bit, unsure if I’d just ruined the whole fucking thing with my big mouth. They weren’t words I was good with, having said them to no one beyond family. And even then, I’d used them sparingly.
I loved her. I fucking loved her.
And the craziest thing was that I hadn’t expected her to say a damn thing back to me. True, I’d been worried that she might fire a straight right at me and try to knock my jaw off for being presumptuous or something, but I honestly didn’t expect her to love me back. Yet.
She didn’t bring it up, either. Not right away, anyway. Not after we took a shower together or when I kissed her goodnight for the last time that night. She smiled and snuggled against me as she fell asleep but didn’t say anything about the fact that I’d confessed my feelings, and in that particular way.
But I was okay with it, I really was. And as we laid around the beach the next day, with nothing on our agendas except time together, sun, and salt water, I got her talking more about her life.
“A zip code doesn’t necessarily create happiness, you know.”
We’d been talking about California again, and it was all I could do not to make a face each time she brought it up. She was her own woman, I knew that. But I also knew she was my woman in a lot of ways and, damn, I didn’t want her to talk about leaving.
“I get that,” she agreed. “But I also know that there are things I want to accomplish that happen in other zip codes. That’s where I’m at now. Boston doesn’t have Chef Santiago.”
“What about after Chef Santiago? Does Boston have anything worth coming back for?”
The question was loaded as hell, I knew, but I put it out there anyway. I’d been way more free with how I felt from the get-go and now I wanted to see what she thought — if she’d react.
She looked at me over the rim of her sunglasses, those bright blue eyes studying my face.
“Maybe,” she said quickly, and my heart raced with excitement. “I’m not sure.”
“Why do you do that?”
She looked back at the water. We were laying on beach loungers and had finished lunch a half hour earlier.
“Do what?”
She was being defensive — playing like she didn’t know what she was doing. I was calling bullshit.
“Why do you leave yourself an out?”
She frowned. “I don’t do that.”
I sat up, swinging my legs to the sand and facing her. “Yes, you do. You’re cagey when you talk about your feelings. Why?”
I knew she had an ex-boyfriend in Alabama who had been a bit of a narcissist, and she was probably still gun shy from that experience. But I wasn’t that asshole chef, and I’d done about everything I could to show her how much I cared.
I pulled the sunglasses from her face, and she had a hard time meeting my eyes. We were on to something here, and there was no way I was letting her get away with not telling me what was going on.
“Was it your ex?”
Her brow furrowed a bit, but she didn’t answer.
I pressed on. “Was it something I did? Was it what I said last night?”
Her eyes shot to me instantly. “Why did you say that?” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You were messing with me, weren’t you?”
Damn.
“Why would you think that, Amelia?” I asked as I gathered both of her hands in mine and pulled her up from the chair. “Why would you say something like that to me?” She was chewing her lower lip and refusing to meet my gaze. “Do you not believe me?” I pressed. I was getting close to something. All my years of reading people and negotiations had taught me to recognize when I was.
Her lips pursed, and I gently gripped her chin between my thumb and forefinger, turning her toward me.
“You don’t have to love me back right now,” I said gently, meaning it. “It’s something that can happen over time. But I knew it a while back, and I felt it. So I said it.”
Her eyes met mine, and she took in a shaky breath. “You meant it?”
The question made me laugh. “Of course.” She still didn’t look convinced. “Amelia, you need to talk to me. Why do you keep me at arm’s distance when it comes to your emotions and how you feel?”
Her lip quivered, and she pulled back, trying to put space between us. I loosened my hold a little but still kept her hands in mine.
“It’s a lot of things,” she finally said. “It’s the fact that you rejected me all those years ago. The fact that Peter felt one way about me one day and, just like that, things changed and my life was ripped apart. Feelings change, and I’m scared to believe yours or to even feel my own emotions because I’m afraid they’ll change for no reason.”
She wasn’t done, though. I’d broken some sort of dam in her, and she had more to say.
“We’re not the same, Declan. We’re not the same weight class when it comes to dating, and you know it. You’re two or three divisions above me, at least, and you’ve always been. Why would you let yourself feel things for me like that when you know I probably don’t fit in your world so great? I’m a chef who works a couple lunch shifts a week. Who doesn’t know what the hell she really wants to do with herself.” She sighed deeply. “And you’re you. You know who you are, what you want, and how to get there.”
She snapped her mouth closed and looked back to the water. I took her chin again and made her face me.
“I know who I am too, sweetheart. And I don’t make casual attachments to people who don’t matter to me. I meant what I said when I told you I loved you — everything about you. Your smart mouth, your overprotectiveness of your family, the fact that you dream big even though you just sold everything you owned to come back and help your sick father. I know you, and I can’t wait to get to know you even more, if you’ll let me.”
Her breathing was suddenly shallow and ragged, and her eyes looked a little wild. Had I spooked her?
“What if I don’t want Boston, Declan?” she whispered, the truth finally out. “What if I get out to California and it’s my dream come true? What if us falling in love is just a waste of time in the end?”
There it was. Her biggest fear.
“Are you falling for me, Amelia?” I pulled her chin gently closer to me as I leaned toward her. She shut her eyes and didn’t immediately respond. “Tell me the truth, baby.”
Her face went soft at that, and she blew a breath from her nose before opening her eyes and looking at me — straight to my very soul.
“Yes.”
That was all I needed to know we were on the right track and I told her so.
“We don’t need a crystal ball,” I said. “We don’t have to have the answers. Just knowing what we want right now is enough for me and if the time comes that I have to set you free, we’ll deal with it then. But I’m telling you, places don’t make your dreams come true. You make your dreams come true.”
Her arms were around my neck, and before I realized it, she was on my lap, kissing me.
“I’m scared of how fast this is going,” she whispered into my neck. “I’m scared of how much I feel for you so quickly.”
My chin was on the top of her head so she couldn’t see my smile.
“We can work with this, baby,” I said, holding her tight. “We can work miracles with this.”
***
Puerto Rico taught me a few things about my girlfriend and something about myself.
First, Amelia Byrne was insane. Certifiably.
As the guide hooked her into the harness to take her parasailing, I couldn’t help but try to talk her out of it.
“Are you sure? You’re really sure you want to do this?” I couldn’t disguise the panic in my voice at the thought of this woman flying off the back of a boat like some gorgeous, bikini-clad kite.
“For the twentieth time,” she said with a laugh. “Yes. I want to do this.”
The guide did a final safety check and looked at me. “You want to go on the boat with us too?”
“Of course I do,” I replied, as if a boatful of strangers taking her all over the cove alone was actually going to happen.
I was uneasy as hell as I got situated beside the man, Enrique, who was in charge of making sure her cords didn’t get tangled or come loose. He was smiling and having a good old time while I felt like my stomach was going to launch out of my throat at any minute when the speed picked up, and she was pulled into the sky, gorgeous long legs dangling as she whipped through the air.
“Are you okay?” Enrique asked. “Seasick?”
I shook my head. No, I wasn’t seasick, but I was going to lose my shit if she didn’t get down soon, healthy and in one piece.
The ride was over eventually, and I didn’t even bother to try to play it off as I waited for them to reel her in and unhook her harness.
Part of me wanted to freak-out on her, but as I approached, I saw the wild look of exhilaration in her eyes. I exhaled a long, relieved breath. She looked like she had a great time.
I grinned. I was getting to know Amelia, and one of the things I now understood was that the woman was incredibly persuasive.
When I’d stepped off the plane in San Juan the day before, there’d been zero chance in a million that anyone could ever convince me to jump into a parachute harness and get dragged behind a boat.
But Amelia batting her gorgeous eyes at me and promising me a round of oral for the ages? With a weary sigh, I’d agreed and did everything I could not to listen to that sane, rational voice in my head that said the whole thing was a bad idea. After all, how many stories had I seen about people crashing to their deaths doing stupid shit like this on their vacations?
I was sure I had a face that could freeze water while I was getting the safety briefing and instructions, and even when Amelia tried to get me to smile for a picture, I wouldn’t. More like couldn’t. There was a constant thrum of “don’t fucking do this” going on in my mind that I was having a hard time turning off long enough to give her a thumbs-up on Instagram.
Fuck, I didn’t want to do this. I was too old. Too smart. Too breakable.
“You have good insurance, you’re fine,” she teased as she pressed her lips to mine in a farewell kiss. That’s right. That crazy woman had done this crap with no insurance coverage.
“We’re going to talk about a few things when I get down from this,” I yelled to her, and she only waved and smiled back, clearly not hearing a thing. Or pretending not to.
Enrique have me a thumbs-up, and I shot him a bird in return. He laughed and took off. In only a few seconds, I was in the air.
And it was fan-fucking-tastic.
For most of my life, I’d lived in a carefully constructed cage. And the moment I stepped out, I had a fucking blast.
The parasailing turned into tequila shots at the bar later that night. Not too many, of course, because hangovers weren’t cute at my age, and always with a sneaky glass of water that nobody paid much mind to me drinking so I didn’t end up sick. The tequila shots turned into karaoke at the resort’s nightclub.
“You have to sing ‘Baby Got Back,’” Amelia insisted as she launched the giant binder into my lap as I was sipping on one of those waters I’d snuck.
Her eyes were bright, and her cheeks were pink, and her laugh was louder than normal. My sweet girl was buzzed, and it was adorable on her. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and after she’d agreed to sing some Taylor Swift song first, I let her talk me into performing Sir Mix-a-Lot.
Little did she know, I knew each line by heart. Every inflection, every nuance — that song had been my favorite party anthem back in the day.
And I nailed it.
When I got back to our booth, there were tears rolling down her cheeks, and she was doubled over in laughter.
I’d come bearing another round of shots, which I promptly handed off to her and we clinked shot glasses.
“I’ll never get the image of you singing that out of my head. Ever.”
Good, I thought to myself. I wanted to be indelibly etched in that beautiful mind of hers, and if I had to perform terrible karaoke to break ground, it was a small price to pay.
That was, of course, until we woke up on Sunday morning and I saw just how many photos and clips the woman had posted to social media of me hip thrusting to hip hop karaoke.
I had a tiny bit of a hangover so I might have been a little melodramatic. “You have to take that down, Amelia. Seriously. I look ridiculous. How many likes does it already have?”
She was laughing again, and I couldn’t stay mad, though I did promise to break into her phone and take them down myself if I had to.
I never got around to it.
We recovered most of the day Sunday and packed up our belongings after lunch. Our flight left at four that afternoon, and we were leaving for the airport a little early.
As we got settled into the car and pulled away from the resort, she got a wistful look in her eyes and turned to me. “I wish we could have that much fun all the time.”
The words were like a punch to the gut, knowing we were headed back into a shitstorm involving the Duffy family and their cronies, her father’s health conditions, her brother’s asshole tendencies, my development project woes, and life in a crowded city like Boston in general.
But her words also spurned me to make myself a promise as we drove next to the ocean on our way to the plane. Our time in Puerto Rico together had given me a glimpse at how exciting and fun life could be, and that I’d do well to take my own advice.
It wasn’t necessarily the where that decided if you were happy so much as the how. And if I were smart, I’d keep that in mind — just like I’d asked Amelia to do.